TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE FACILITY

Concept and objectives of the Technical Assistance Facility

The Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) is an instrument created in the EuroMed Justice IV project with the aim of providing SPCs flexible and tailored capacity building in priority areas, based on the identification of needs and gaps by ENI SPCs. It is a demand-driven instrument which falls under the new flexibility and bottom-up approach of EuroMed Justice.

The TAF can be used to support requests from regional, sub-regional and - in exceptional cases - individual countries.

The TAF will be on going throughout the project and will be implemented through the procedures established within the TAF Operating Manual.

Description of the mechanism. Steps.

Identification of the common needs in priority areas

Drafting a “TAF request”

Submission of the “TAF request” to the Project Management Team

Analysis by the Project Management Team: verification of criteria and assessment

Decision by the European Commission

Implementation of the requested activity

As this identification of common needs in priority areas can naturally arise when implementing the project activities, the Project Management Team will foster the use of the TAF by the SPCs when the activities are being implemented. Besides, the Project Management Team (PMT) could also in this way support the SPCs on the best way to present a request. For example, if during the implementation of a specific activity of the EMJ Experts Group the participants identify another future activity that can be implemented under the EMJ IV objectives and which addresses a specific need of some countries, these countries could file a request to the PMT in order to implement this future activity under the TAF instrument.

Criteria to be met by the request

To belong to EuroMed Justice thematic areas of regional cooperation

To contribute to the achievement of the overall objective and purposes of the EuroMed Justice.

Not to duplicate or overlap with another activity foreseen in the EuroMed Justice project or other projects.

To respond to a specific need and/or gap identified by the SPCs.

Preference for regional requests or submitted by a large number of SPCs.